bash command to change title of screen window (inside the screen session)

Question

I want to set the title of the current screen window (inside the screen session) via a bash command.

I know it can be done via C-a A, but that does not work directly as a shell command.

screen -t <mytitle> <args>

in the current window works, but it creates a new window. I want to rename the current window.

All the posts I saw either dealt with doing this outside a running screen session, or used the screen keybindings/commands.

Answer 1

Open your ~/.bashrc file in gedit

gedit ~/.bashrc

Add the following function at the end of the file.

# function to set terminal title
function settitle(){
  if [[ -z "$ORIG" ]]; then
      ORIG=$PS1
  fi
  TITLE="\[\e]2;$*\a\]"
  PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}
}

Rerun the bashrc file to make changes effective in the current terminal. This won't be needed afterwards.

source ~/.bashrc

Now using the function rename the terminal name from the shell. From the shell type

settitle hello

This will name it hello.